Monday, October 6, 2014

Book Review: "Big Little Lies" by Liane Moriarty [Birchbox Book Club September Pick]

Big Little Liars is a myriad of drama wrapped in a neat yet suspenseful suburban bow.

I had a little trouble getting into the book originally, but Big Little Liars is definitely a novel that once you get into, you won't want to put down. Liane Moriarty weaves a tale of three woman who although being very different, are tied together in a very intricate way.

The book bounces back and forth between the viewpoint of three characters: Madeline, Celeste, and Jane. Madeline is a part-time housewife, part-time marketing director, and mother of three - one from a previous marriage. Celeste is a former lawyer turned trophy wife and mother of twins. And, Jane, is a young, single mother who recently moved to the peninsula. As the story unfolds, readers discover that these woman have some interesting commonalities that lead to securing a bond between them that will outlast adultery, scandal, and even murder.

What I really enjoyed most was the interjection of pieces of interviews with the periphery characters strewn through the text. The entire novel you know that someone is going to die, and the small insights you get along the way lead you to speculate. It wasn't until just before that part of the book that I actually figured it out. It was almost like a mind game attached to the reading.

Big Little Liars is set in Australia, so for those "foreign" readers like myself, there will probably be a few awkward moments where you might need to use context clues to figure out the meaning of less familiar words. Other than that, the book is a fairly quick read despite being over 400 pages long.

You can pick up a copy of Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty here or on the Birchbox site. The book is rumored to be coming to the big screen in 2017 starring Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman.

Thank you very much to Birchbox for very generously providing me with a copy of this book for review purposes. (And, no, they did not compensate me in any other way for this lovely review).